same-a young woman (Anny Ondra) follows a suave artist (Cyril Ritchard) to his studio; when he tries to rape her, she kills him in self-defense and says nothing when her policeman boyfriend (John Longden) is put on the case. It is Hitch- cock's lifelong master plot-a woman yields to temptation and enters a vortex of calamity-but using images alone, Hitchcock tells it in a strik- ingly different way. He registers emotional shifts in intertitled dialogue through jolting changes of angle and, unhindered by the stage-bound meth- ods of early sound recording, brings the film's documentary elements to the fore. The street views from aboard speeding paddy wagons and the at- tention to police procedural detail suggest Hitch- cock's great works of decades to come, and the film's most astonishing shot-of the artist and his prey creating together on canvas an alluring portrait of a woman-shows that in 1929 Hitch- cock had already found the definitive metaphor for his creative method as well as for the carnal motives behind it. Silent.-Richard Brody (Film Forum; Jan. 12.) BROKE BACK MOUNTAIN In the summer of 1963, Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) herd the sheep on Brokeback Mountain, in Wyoming, and fall in love. Ang Lee's movie traces the ups and downs of that love over many years, mak- ing it clear that the downs are fated to outnum- ber the ups. The film has a curious motion to begin with, managing to seem at once hectic and sluggish; once the heroes start to grow up, how- ever, and thus to struggle against their feelings, the story comes painfully alive, and the perfor- mances stretch toward the tragic. There is fine support from Anne Hathaway and Michelle Wil- liams as the baffled wives of the two men and from Kate Mara as Ennis's teen-age daughter, but the picture belongs to Ledger, whose downcast gaze and chewed-up words bear almost unbear- able testimony to a heart under siege. Any at- tempt to promote this as an issue movie, gripped by an agenda, feels badly misplaced; the only issue here is the oldest and most sorrowful one of all.-Anthony Lane (Reviewed in our issue of 12/12/05.) (In wide release.) CACHÉ (HIDDEN) The latest attempt on the part of the Austrian di- rector Michael Haneke to disturb our peace. As with "Code Unknown," the story takes place in Paris and stars Juliette Binoche, whose blend of suavity and panic seems ideal for Haneke's pur- poses. This time, she plays Anne, whose husband, Georges (Daniel Auteuil), is a talk-show host; in the opening minutes, they receive a videotape that suggests that their lives are being scrutinized by a spy. As the fear of being watched intensifies, the secrets of Georges's past come to light, and the movie, thanks to a gentle and dismaying perfor- mance by Maurice Bénichou, as Georges's child- hood acquaintance, turns into a pitiless probing of France's colonialist hangover. Some people will find it horribly harsh, especially toward the complacent Georges, and a little prior knowledge of modern French history might be useful; on its own terms, though, the film, not least in the creepiness of its open ending, remains an efficient wrecker of nerves. In French.-A.L. (12/26/05 & 1/2/06) (Lincoln Plaza Cinemas and Sunshine Cinema.) HOODWINKED Cory Edwards's computer-animated film is a "Rashomon" -like take on Little Red Riding Hood, with Red (voiced by Anne Hathaway), Granny (Glenn Close), the woodsman (James Belushi), and the wolf (Patrick Warburton) each telling his or her side of the story to a sly frog detective (David Ogden Stiers). The film is independently and cheaply made, and it shows: if the visuals are a little rough around the edges, the project none- theless has the homemade and joyful tone of a high-school skit. The story is set in the cell-phone- and-personal-computer-free nineteen-seventies and features bell-bottoms, kung fu, and a clutch of songs that channel the era's hits, from ZZ Top's to Kurtis Blow's. Some of the subplots seem a bit farfetched, but when the music kicks in and the gags score-as with a banjo-bearing ram with in- 20 THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2006 terchangeable horns and an antically caffeinated squirrel-the film is an effervescent high for all ages.-R.B. (In wide release.) THE INTRUDER Inspired by the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy's essay on his experience as a heart-transplant pa- tient, Claire Denis has made a film that attempts to convey internal experience in unmediated form. She does not succeed, but the results linger in memory nonetheless. Louis Trebor (Michel Subor) is a reclusive figure residing deep in the French countryside, a cool killer, an uncaring father, and a secretive master of international finance and in- trigue. Suffering visibly from a coronary ailment, he withdraws cash from a vault in a Swiss bank to pay for a black-market heart transplant. The vast story, which passes from France and Switzer- land to South Korea and Tahiti, is realized in brief, impressionistic scenes with little dialogue. Most of the film is filled with flowing imagery: close- ups of bodies, hazy natural splendors, the hyp- notic passing show. Subor, an actor with an ad- mirable way with words, is given little to say and little to do, though his brooding presence is itself a source of fascination. Denis uses images from an early film of Subor's as a sort of living mem- ory for her own film, but the idea, though inge- nious, merely makes for a late and brief adorn- ment. The attempt to fuse narrative with what is familiarly called "experimental" cinema is unre- alized. In French.-R.B. (Cinema Village.) \ . \ "-- \ \ '\ (, ",-" , D o , ( (--- " --- to like the big dope; this version is more an impos- sible match between partners equally in love. Peter Jackson is a master of brilliantly colored fantasy, but the movie, more than three hours long, stops for a dinosaur show on Skull Island, and almost every scene feels padded.-David Denby (12/19/05) (In wide release.) MATCH POINT In the opening half hour or so of Woody Allen's new movie, which sets the scene in upper-class contemporary London, the exposition feels a lit- tle lame: two impoverished outsiders-Chris Wil- ton (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), an Irish-born tennis pro, and Nola Rice (Scarlett Johansson), an un- successful young American actress-are both try- ing to marry into a very wealthy English family. At first, the conversational idiom is falsely debo- nair, the plot too easily manipulated. But then the two interlopers face each other in a bar, and the movie takes off. Rhys Meyers, who has widely spaced blue eyes and a flattened upper lip, can look angelic or brutally calculating at will. Jo- hansson, poured into a white dress, also has an unusual upper lip, curved and fleshy, and a low, smoky voice. What follow are the most passion- ate and explicitly erotic love scenes that Allen has ever directed. The movie's narrative scheme be- comes urgent and will-driven in the manner of Dreiser: Chris suddenly has one woman too many on his hands. Against our better instincts, we are with this cold-blooded murderer every inch of the " - '\ f ); /' \\ =-' / , t) '" "Glory Road," directed by James Gartner and starring Josh Lucas, opens on Jan. 13. KING KONG The big guy is back-the same chocolate-doughnut nose, seriously mashed, as if he'd been sleeping face down in the jungle for decades, and the matted hair, worn natural as always. The director, Peter Jackson, who co-wrote the screenplay with Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, returns the pop myth to the De- pression year-1933-in which the great original, directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoed- sack, was made. Naomi Watts is the blonde this time-a starving, eager-to-perform vaudeville ac- tress. When she realizes, in the jungle, that the ape isn't going to hurt her, she does corny vaudeville stuff-cartwheels and juggling and slinky Egyptian moves-and her solitary auditor, clearly amused, grunts and snorts and shifts his weight. Jack Black, rather restrained, is the reckless huckster movie- maker Denham, and Adrien Brody is the nominal hero, though he actually receives less affection from Watts than the ape does. The original and the dread- ful 1976 version were about an ape that wants a blonde and can't have her, and a woman who comes way. With Brian Cox, Penelope Wilton, Emily Mortimer, and Matthew Goode. Shot in Belgra- via and along the banks of the Thames. Enrico Caruso, on the soundtrack, sings of love and de- spair.-D.D. (1/9/06) MR. HULOT1S HOLIDAY People are at their most desperate when they are working at enjoying themselves; it is Jacques Ta- ti's peculiar comic triumph to have caught the ghastliness of a summer vacation at the beach. For- tunately, his technique is light and dry slapstick; the chronicle of human foibles and frustrations never sinks to the moist or the lovable. As direc- tor, co-author, and star, Tati is sparse, eccentric, quick. It is not until afterward-with the sweet, nostalgic music lingering-that these misadventures ma y take on a certain depth and poignancy. In French.-Pauline Kael (Anthology Film Archives; 4: Jan. 12.) MUNICH Steven Spielberg's latest film begins at the Olym- pic Games in 1972 with the kidnapping and kill- 2